


Self-Defense, or The One Where Foreman Teaches Chase How to Throw a Punch

by Ignaz Wisdom (ignaz)



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Gen, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-20
Updated: 2007-08-20
Packaged: 2017-10-02 00:10:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignaz/pseuds/Ignaz%20Wisdom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>See title!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Self-Defense, or The One Where Foreman Teaches Chase How to Throw a Punch

**Author's Note:**

> For Foreman Fest prompt #111: "Chase gets beat up and Foreman decides to teach him how to fight in a kind of cute, grudging, older-brother way." Thanks to thesamefire and especially to rubberbutton, who went over this twice and made it a hundred times better. Thanks also to aithlyn, who pulled through with a great title.

Chase walked through the door on Friday morning with a harried look in his eyes and a bruise the color of a ripe plum on his jaw. Foreman wasn't going to say anything, but Cameron glanced up at Chase's arrival, gasped quietly, and jumped to her feet.

Foreman sighed and paged through last month's _Forbes_ while Cameron fussed over Chase, gently tilting his head this way and that to examine the bruise.

"What happened?" she asked, her voice as scandalized as it was concerned.

"Clinic patient," Chase mumbled. "Apparently he didn't like the way I -- it's not important," he abruptly finished.

Cameron gave Chase a funny look and then glanced over at Foreman, as if he could explain what the hell was wrong with the guy. Foreman shrugged. "Not House again this time?" he asked.

Chase slumped heavily into a seat and answered him with a sullen glare.

Cameron pressed her fingers against the bruise. "Does it hurt when I --"

"It's fine," Chase said, swatting her hand away and refusing to meet her eyes. At that, Foreman raised an eyebrow. Chase didn't usually shun contact with Cameron.

Cameron gave in and sighed, which was also kind of a surprise, and reverted to her natural Chase expression: looking at him like he was a horrible disappointment to her. Chase's terse reminder that he was a doctor, too, did nothing to mollify her. She rolled her eyes, grabbed a manila folder from the glass table, and left for the lab.

A moment of awkward silence passed between them.

Foreman closed the magazine and tossed it onto the table. "You need to learn how to fight."

Chase stared at him for a moment before shaking his head. "It wasn't like that. It just --"

"Someone hits you, it's a fight." Chase didn't look convinced, so Foreman amended: "Self-defense, Chase. You might give it a try sometime. Do you even know how to throw a decent punch?"

"Yeah," Chase said dryly, leaning back in his chair and staring at the ceiling. "My dad showed me. Right after throwing a ball around in the backyard and taking me camping. Oh, wait, that was an episode of _Leave it to Beaver_."

Foreman bit back a snappish response about Chase's family being able to buy his way out of trouble. Something in Chase's dour expression made him shut up. Instead he said, "They didn't cover this in seminary school?" He paused. "How many times have you been punched since you took this job, anyway?"

Chase looked embarrassed and didn't answer the question. "I'm not going to hit a patient," he insisted. "Not even if he hits me first."

"And what if he _keeps_ hitting you? Are you just going to lie down and take it?"

"I don't --"

Foreman suddenly laughed. "Man, you just love having people walk all over you, don't you?"

A muscle in Chase's jaw twitched. "That's crap," he said. "Of course I don't like having people -- but that doesn't mean -- look, why do you even care?" He stood up angrily and paced toward the sink. "This is none of your business." He pulled a mug from a shelf, slammed it down on the counter, and then reached for the coffee pot. Brown liquid sloshed over the sides of the mug as he poured.

Foreman steepled his fingers and looked away. Flippantly, he offered: "I could teach you."

Chase snorted. "Oh, yes, _please_ teach me your street-fighting skills, Foreman."

"All I'm saying is that you've had some bad luck when it comes to violent patients," Foreman said magnanimously. "Not to mention bosses. It couldn't hurt to learn some basics."

Chase didn't answer, leaning over the kitchenette counter, shoulders slightly hunched.

"Hey," Foreman said, forging ahead without thinking too hard about it, "the only reason I know how to fight is ... well, I have my reasons. If you never had to learn before now, more power to you."

Chase was still silent. He tore off a square of paper towel and mopped up the spilled coffee, then lifted the mug to his mouth.

Foreman shrugged, and since Chase couldn't see him, sighed loudly for added effect. "Suit yourself," he said, pushing himself to his feet. By the time he was standing, Chase had turned around and was watching him balefully.

He averted his eyes when Foreman looked at him and defiantly said, "Fine."

"Follow me," Foreman answered and headed for the hallway.

"Seriously," he said on the third flight, "how many times _have_ you been hit since you took this job?"

Chase shoved the door to the roof open with more force than necessary.

It was cloudy outside, and the air had the kind of refreshing chill found only on the roofs of one's own workplace. Foreman rolled up his shirt sleeves.

"You have to have the right stance," he started. Chase gave him a sulky stare in return.

Foreman shifted his feet, planting them shoulder width apart, and slowly, reluctantly, Chase adopted a similar position. Foreman scrutinized him, up and down, and then said, "Bend your knees a little."

Chase slumped, bending his knees awkwardly as Foreman fought back a grin.

"All right," he said. "Now make a tight fist." He demonstrated with his own hand, fingers tightly curled, with his thumb on the outside.

"You know, I _think_ I could have figured this much out on my own."

"Don't bend your wrist," Foreman continued, undaunted. "Keep your fist in a straight line with your arm, or you'll hurt yourself."

Chase, a peevish expression on his face, rolled up his own shirtsleeves and held his fist out to show that he understood.

Foreman examined the line of his arm, the anterior muscles visible under the skin, the tense and flex. "Pretty good," he pronounced before stepping closer, reaching for Chase's wrist.

"I suppose this is something you were born knowing how to do," Chase said quietly, sounding half resentful and half envious.

"No," Foreman said, shifting his feet and turning Chase's fist slightly with his own fingers. He closed his eyes for a brief moment. Behind the lids, a choppy, dimly lit home video presented: himself, no more than eleven years old, his own small and tentative fist enclosed in Marcus's much larger, more confident one. _You gotta know how to punch_, he had said. _I can't watch your back forever. Someday you're gonna have to fight for yourself._

That had been six months before Marcus's first arrest.

Foreman adjusted the position of Chase's arm, careful not to correct too firmly or to let his fingers dwell for too long. He stepped back. "Only useful thing my brother ever taught me. All right, what you want to do is aim for the chin. Hit someone in the chin with enough force and it'll be over quickly. You want it to be over quickly."

"You're not kidding," Chase muttered.

Foreman allowed the hint of a smile to cross his lips. "The real power is in the snap, the end of the punch. Your arm should be fully extended when your fist makes contact. Then draw back as fast as you can and hit again if you have to. If you can. And try not to think about just hitting him in the face -- if you think about it like you're punching _through _him, you'll put more force into it."

"I can't believe this," Chase said, dropping his arm and shifting his weight, the skeptical look back in his eyes. "I'm getting advice on how to break a man's jaw from a doctor."

"If anyone could give you advice on how to break someone's jaw, it would be a guy who knows how to fix someone's jaw," Foreman answered. "Now listen --"

Behind them, Cameron called, "Don't you feel like there's an ethical conflict?"

Foreman spun around. She was leaning against the wall by the door, arms crossed, an amused look on her face. She'd obviously been watching them for a while.

"Ethical conflicts are kind of a job hazard of working with House, if you hadn't noticed," Foreman answered.

Chase's hands were at his hips now, a gesture that reminded Foreman weirdly of Dr. Wilson, but he was grinning. "Foreman's ethical flexibility is why House hired him, remember?"

Foreman scowled, mostly out of habit. House's rationale no longer bothered him, and the sting of the invasion of his privacy was nothing more than a dull ache.

_Keep your chin down. You have to do whatever it takes to protect yourself_, Marcus had said. _To get ahead. To win. Because nobody else is going to help you._

"Anything else, sensei?" Chase asked.

"Yeah," Foreman said. "Throw the first punch. Whoever hits first usually wins."


End file.
